


A Shape That Satisfies

by TiamatsChild



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Gen, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-16 12:26:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4625322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TiamatsChild/pseuds/TiamatsChild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mei builds community. Scar shadows her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Shape That Satisfies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Guinevak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guinevak/gifts).



> Written for a prompt from Guinevak: "scar and mei and water buckets."

Mei, it turned out, knew the array to mend an old and leaky bucket and return it to its original glory, firm and tight as it if came direct from the cooper, by heart. She sketched it in the earth in the same rapid flashing movements she used to defend herself, to take apart hands and claws that reached for her. But this time, instead of destruction, renewal poured out of her small body, her shining spirit. 

It was not, and never had been, that Mei reminded him of his brother. She did not. They were nothing alike, except in their determination, their all encompassing willingness to pour every piece of themselves away if by so doing they could save their people. No. It was not that. It was, rather, that watching Mei he thought he saw, as he had never seen before, the gift his brother had seen in alchemy. Something clean, and kind, and living, blasphemy or no. 

Mei's joy, the way she held out the reconstructed buckets to their owners, laughed through bartering recompense, arguing these very poor people down to paying her in token gifts and the force of their goodwill, made alchemy seem alive. When Mei wielded it, the _way_ she wielded it, it struck him as a force like rain. Something that belonged, that nurtured and destroyed, not a sterile interloper that took and shattered the bonds of the natural world. 

“Should I offer to do the same for your friends?” she asked, after she was done, as they walked away up the slope to the slightly separate Ishvalan neighborhood of the shantytown. 

“No,” he told her. “They will not be able to accept.”

She nodded thoughtfully. He knew she did not understand. She had her own religion, and her own convictions. But she asked after his and his people's, and it was more than he had ever expected from a friend who was not Ishvalan. 

And, he thought, though he knew he could never tell her, though he had no words to do so, in a way she had given his brother back to him. For so long he had only known that his brother had chosen, that he had gone a different way than he had, than anyone had, that there was something of _how_ left behind in his notes and in his arm, but nothing he could trace of why. She had shown him what it was his brother saw, and, knowing that, he could see where his brother had chosen to go. 

Perhaps this time he could even find a way to follow.


End file.
